PsalterMark

Habakkuk’s Watch
I am not one for dinner parties, but I often wonder who the famous or infamous people are I’d enjoy meeting over a meal. People who could share something of their passion, wisdom, or expertise. My list frequently changes but there is one constant and that’s David Attenborough. I have been watching David Attenborough’s TV output for many years—way before he became the national treasure and world champion for environmental issues he is today. I remember the 1979 TV series Life on Earth when so enchanted I wanted the book for Christmas. But even before that, David Attenborough was teaching me about fossils in a 1975 children’s programme called Fabulous Animals.

I admire him as he is so focused, passionate, single-minded and tireless in his passion for creation. You might say he is a prophet. Behind his programmes there lie same patient and equally tireless people. People who wait for weeks, even months, to get 30 seconds of footage. What sort of patience and singlemindedness must you need to watch day-after-day for that perfect shot? What single-mindedness must you need to be David Attenborough? Watching not just the world but noticing first-hand the warning signs that things are not right.

Habakkuk was single-minded like this. He watched, as we see at the start of Habakkuk 2. He sought God’s answer to his prayers. He was a true prophet. False prophets ignore the signs and celebrate a happy status quo in the face of the impending judgement. Prophets read the time properly, false prophets are in a different time zone. As the singer Sting recognised of Jeremiah’s time:

It was midnight, midnight at noon
Everyone talked in rhyme
Everyone saw the big clock tickin’,
Nobody knew, nobody knew the time.

Habakkuk, like Jeremiah, in late 7th century Jerusalem, was watching, seeking, and hearing. As true prophets they saw the big clock was ticking. At the start of Chapter 2 we read:

I will stand at my watch
    and station myself on the ramparts;
I will look to see what he will say to me,
    and what answer I am to give to this complaint.
Habakkuk 2:1, NIV

Habakkuk’s watching is poignant because the very ramparts of Jerusalem where he stands as prophet will be destroyed by the Babylonians.

Yahweh’s Five Alarm Bells
Habakkuk is given five woes by Yahweh. Every prophet hopes to have some blessings to bestow, but here Habakkuk only gets woes that ring in his ear like the shrillest of alarm bells. Some 600 years later, Jesus would also have the job of imparting similar woes in Matthew 23. The five timely woes that Habakkuk hears belong together. There is a disturbing repeating refrain that unites them:

For you have shed human blood;
    you have destroyed lands and cities and everyone in them.
Habakkuk 2:8b and 2:17b, NIV

The judgement in these alarm bells is aimed fair and square at the Babylonians, the very nation that Yahweh has raised up to judge his people and Jerusalem. Yet they also act as a warning for anyone who promotes such injustice.

Woe 1 is for those who are made wealthy by extortion and violence. Alarm bell 2 is about feathering your nest at others expense. Taking things, even from the poorest, so as to become wealthy to the point of heedless excess. Woe 3 is for those who show indifference for right and wrong. The ability to serve one’s own needs without recourse to a higher authority of justice or fear of the living God. Woe 4 seems to be concerned with leading the nations astray, seducing them to their detriment. This is Babylon at its most insidious—breaking nations as a voyeur not caring for their being stripped bare of their assets of wealth, culture and even people. The fifth and final alarm bell is that most insidious problem of nations and people: idolatry. The stupidity of swapping fear of the living God for a deaf stick or a blind stone.

Babylon-the-arrogant will sweep in and so will judge injustice. But she like Judah, will know judgement.

The Metronome of Faith
Whilst woes dominate this passage in terms of length, for us on the brighter side of Easter, verse 4 dominates in terms of theological weight:

“See, the enemy is puffed up;
    his desires are not upright—
but the righteous person will live by his faithfulness.
Habakkuk 2:4, NIV

The desires of Babylon make it God’s instrument of judgement for seven decades, but those same desires make it a passing ‘failed state’ like countless other regimes whose fate is as certain as their injustice. It is the second half of this verse that lies at the heart of Paul’s account of the Good News of Jesus as he quotes Habakkuk:

For in the gospel the righteousness of God is revealed—a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: “The righteous will live by faith.”
Romans 1:17, NIV

It was this same part-verse that lay at the heart of Martin Luther’s bombshell in the Reformation. His 95 theses had words written through them like those in a stick of rock. Those words were The righteous will live by faith.

For Luther, as for Paul, it is not the Church, not any commandment, no practice, no works, and certainly no money that can buy new life. This is purchased solely by Christ on the cross. Only faith in the Son of God’s person and actions is necessary for salvation.

In a time of darkness Martin Luther recovered the metronome of faith that was there all along. God’s mercy is made effective via our faith. An Old Covenant truth made firm through Jesus Christ as Paul explains in Romans. The metronome of God’s heart beating as God’s grace is worked out through his people who live by faith.

Telling the Time Today
We are all prophets. We might not share Habakkuk’s, Jeremiah’s, or Martin Luther’s fame. But we are called like them to tell the time. We are to wait and watch for the living God:

I wait for the LORD, my whole being waits,
    and in his word I put my hope.
I wait for the Lord
    more than watchmen wait for the morning,
    more than watchmen wait for the morning.
Psalm 130:5–6, NIV

Waiting means discipline in this age of distraction. Waiting requires patience. It requires the singlemindedness of faith. It is prayer rightly understood as persistence.

The Lord is in his holy temple;
    let all the earth be silent before him.
Habakkuk 2:20, NIV

This verse invites the action of faithfulness. Faith is imbibing God’s word. Faithfulness is living it. Faithfulness is bringing God’s word to people desperately in need of life and love. It is bringing Good News. Not the shallow good news ‘There, there, all will be fine’ but the richer news that amidst darkness we await the dawn of a day ‘when all will be well’. Not the sickly sweet, good news that people want to hear, but the savoury wholesome good news that sin and injustice will be judged and dealt with once and for all in Christ.

The Lord is in his holy temple;
    let all the earth be silent before him.